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by sadlittletiger



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:27:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26692957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadlittletiger/pseuds/sadlittletiger
Summary: When you're tired of running, come home.
Relationships: Chris Redfield/Claire Redfield
Kudos: 30





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**Author's Note:**

  * For [calcelmo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/calcelmo/gifts).
  * Inspired by [breathe deeper](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23789608) by [calcelmo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/calcelmo/pseuds/calcelmo). 



> Part one of two. No warnings or tags for this chapter, other than expletives and maybe the suggestion of someone enjoying analingus.
> 
> I wish I had a really cool song for this, but I don't. 
> 
> Please imagine the recently revealed Chris design when you read.
> 
> Thanks to charmsfly, for listening, editing, and contributing.

_2021._

* * *

“Jesus, these _jowls_ ,” she said, reaching up to pinch the side of his face.

He batted her hand away, laughing. His eyes wrinkled deeply at the corners and his breath turned to fog in the cold night air.

They stared at each other on his doorstep.

“You look more like dad every time I see you.” She smiled for him.

He shrugged his broad shoulders, before pulling her into a hug.

* * *

“What kind did you get?” he asked, reaching into the bag.

She finished washing her hands at his kitchen sink, frowning at the pile of plates that must have been a week in the making. She bumped the faucet off with her elbow. “Nigiri for me, and a volcano roll for you, because you’re trash.” She wiped her palms on her jeans.

“Nice,” he said, nodding. She watched him break apart the wooden chopsticks and rub them together. “Beer’s in the fridge.”

Even after all this time, she was surprised at how easily they slipped back into place alongside one another. She hadn’t seen him for almost two years, but it may as well have been a few hours - she wove around him in the tiny, cramped kitchen, ducking under his arm, cracking smiles at his dumbass jokes like they’d never been apart at all. 

* * *

“Which one?” she asked, her chin resting in her palm.

“That one.” He pointed to a piece of beautiful bright red tuna.

She fidgeted with the chopsticks for a moment - it had been so long - but she eventually plucked the sushi from the platter, dipping it into the little dish of soy sauce before gracelessly popping it into her mouth. She fumbled to catch a clump of rice as it fell from her lips.

“Good?” 

“Amazing,” she mumbled, her mouth full. She handed him the chopsticks.

The heavy muscles in his forearm rolled as he maneuvered the utensils between his thick fingers. “Which one?” he asked then.

She examined the platter, thoughtful. He waited until she pointed to a piece of the volcano roll, smothered in an ambiguous orange sauce and topped with tiny pink roe. 

It was a game they’d played as kids - carefully selecting each other’s next bite of food. Sometimes the game was charitable and kind. But sometimes it was vicious, designed to see who gagged first, pushing their plate away. It was the sort of game they’d begun playing during those bleak years in foster care, living in a strange family's house, forced to eat strange meals at a strange table.

She watched him as he smudged a dollop of cheap wasabi onto the sushi and deftly brought it to his mouth without losing so much as a grain of sticky rice. He had always been better with chopsticks than she was. 

He made everything look so _easy._ He was so tall and wide, all squared angles and wide planes, but he seemed to do everything with the quick, firm precision of someone half his size. 

He had always been mesmerizing that way, like watching some kind of cruel ballet. He still was, even now, even in the dim, shadowy condo, on the secondhand sun-bleached sofa, with trays of grocery store sushi and cans of Pabst in front of him. 

She watched him chew. Watched him lower his head, his eyes screwing shut. Watched him set the chopsticks down and lean back against the couch, inhaling sharply.

“Too much,” she said.

He shook his head.

“It was too much. You use that shit like it’s ketchup.”

He grimaced. He swallowed. He exhaled in a huff, pinching the bridge of his nose as the sting of the wasabi wore off. 

“Love it,” he said firmly, leaning forward, patting his thighs. “Fucking love it. Ought to be its own food group.”

“You’re gonna get stomach cancer.” She gestured for the chopsticks. 

He turned from her and belched into his fist. “Volcano this time.”

Her shoulders slumped. “Chris, you know I _hate_ it,” she whined. “It’s not even real, it’s just--”

“Nope. Volcano,” he argued curtly. “You’re not a purist. You’re a Redfield.”

Dejected, she surveyed his platter. She frowned at the nearly-neon colors of the volcano roll, and then she chose the smallest piece, dunking it in the soy sauce until it was completely saturated.

She chewed slowly, painfully. She wiped her lips with a folded paper towel. Chris watched her. He raised his eyebrows in anticipation. 

“I mean… it’s not the worst thing I’ve had in my mouth,” she confessed.

“How _is_ Kennedy these days?” he asked.

“Jesus Christ.” She almost sputtered. “ _Stop_.”

"All I can think about is your tongue up his--"

"Fucking stop!" she yelled. "I wish I'd never told you about that, Chris."

" _You_ wish? Shit, I'm the one still picturing it." He took the chopsticks from her hand and chose his own bite.

"Then why the fuck did you ask me?" she snapped. 

He laughed and it sounded so much like the best parts of her childhood, that she could only laugh with him. He nudged her arm and handed her the chopsticks.

“I haven’t seen him in a long time,” she said, coming down.

“He was in Germany for some conference, a few weeks ago. Thought he’d meet up with you.” Chris stretched his arms out over the back of the couch.

She shook her head. The chopsticks felt wrong in her hand. She set them on the edge of the sushi platter and picked up a piece of salmon nigiri with her bare fingers. It bothered her, somehow, that her brother was in closer contact with Leonthan she was. “This is how you should eat it anyway,” she mumbled bitterly, shoving the nigiri in her mouth.

“What happened?” he asked quietly, while she chewed.

“I don’t know,” she said. She leaned away from the table. He waited for her to continue. “Just… I guess… how many times were we supposed to try? When do you give up?”

“No idea.” He looked at her, his expression soft in the low light.

“There was so _much_.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Too much. We couldn’t… I couldn’t.”

“I know,” he said.

“You seeing someone?” she asked carefully.

He stared at her through half-lidded eyes. His thigh bounced, once, twice. “No,” he said, and she knew it was a lie. He leaned forward and picked up another piece of the volcano roll. “Nothing serious. I can tell her to fuck off,” he amended.

Her tongue worried at a stubborn grain of rice, stuck between her teeth. “Why would you do that?”

He paused without looking at her. “If something came up. It’s nothing serious. That’s all.”

Her heart thundered painfully in her chest for a few beats. “That’s all?”

“Yeah. That’s all.” He spread out over the couch again. He filled the space, every inch of it, wherever they were. He was everywhere, somehow. Every part of everything around her. 

When she inhaled, shallow and tight, she couldn’t help but breathe him in. 

He shifted again, restless, beside her. The cushions squeaked. She wondered if he’d fucked the girl on the couch, whoever she was. She hated him for a few seconds, and held her breath until it passed.

“You heard from anyone?” She picked at the couch arm, where the faux leather was cracked. “Barry? Becca?”

“Barry’s Barry. Same as always. Fell off his roof a while ago, trying to clear out the gutters. Broke a couple of ribs.”

She winced. “God… he’s gotta be more careful. He’s getting up there.”

“We’re _all_ getting up there,” he said. “All of us.”

She looked at him, and then her gaze dropped to the floor.

“Anyway… I’m surprised his kid didn’t tell you. The oldest one.” _Moira._ “You two were close for a minute, right?”

“Yeah.” A pang of guilt seared through Claire’s chest. She’d been so wrapped up in losing herself that hadn’t spoken to Moira in over a year. Poor Moira, the girl who’d grown up worshipping her. She’d left everything behind - every memory, every connection… even the good ones, even Moira. All casualties of her desperate attempt to escape.

“But Rebecca...hell, I haven’t _really_ talked to her since… right after Arias?” Chris reached for his third beer. “I’m sure she’s working on some kinda Nobel Prize science shit. You know.”

Claire pulled her legs up and tucked them under her, curling up on the cushion. “ _Science shit._ That’s like… exactly what they’d nominate her for.” She studied his profile in the low light. “Seen anybody else?”

She didn’t say the name. 

She didn’t have to. 

He shook his head. Looking down, he swirled the last dregs of the can. “I went by, this week,” he said. 

She knew he _went by_ every week. And sometimes, when it was bad, when he could barely breathe, he went by every day. _The Psychiatric Institute of Washington_.

“She’s still alive,” he said, finishing off the beer. 

Claire ran her hand through her hair. “No better?”

He shook his head again, chewing his bottom lip. “She just… They’ve got her doped up, and…” He trailed off, his voice breaking.

Claire’s eyes watered. She swallowed and looked away, at anything, anywhere but her brother. Sorrow hung off him like a shadow, black and heavy. 

“She only asks about _him_ , you know? She keeps asking me when he’s coming to get her, and I don’t...” He paused, overwhelmed, helpless. “The other day… I just fuckin’ gave in, Claire. I told her he was coming. I said he’d never forget about her.”

Claire took a deep breath. “She’s afraid he’s going to…”

“No,” he said. “She’s not _afraid_.”

The realization of what he meant settled slowly. She stared at him, her hands laying limply in her lap.

“Sometimes I wonder…” he said, and then stopped.

“Wonder what?” she asked.

“If I shoulda just… let him live.”

“ _Wesker_?” She turned entirely to him then. “No. _No_ , Chris, come on.”

“I think about that.” He looked at her very seriously. “I think about how many times he could’ve killed me, or you, any of us. And it would’ve been so easy. He never took the shot though.”

“Chris--”

“But I killed _him_.” He stared at her, through her, reliving something on the other side. 

“We would all be dead right now, if you hadn’t,” she argued.

“Maybe not,” he said after a moment. “Or maybe it would have been better that way.”

Her jaw tightened. “It’s impossible to talk to you when you get like this.”

He looked down. “Been getting like this a lot lately.”

“Well… good thing I came back then,” she sighed.

“Yeah. Good thing.” He smiled weakly.

They sat together in a comfortable silence, their only company the sound of cars passing by on the nearby turnpike. There was always traffic, even in the middle of a cold Tuesday night. She hated it - the traffic and the rent and the entire bullshit lifestyle that came with Washington D.C., and she’d tried her damndest to run from it. 

But when she looked at him, her only brother, her only family, her only _anything_ … she knew she’d been destined to fail. There was no escape. There was no other home.

Because _he_ was home.

“It’s snowing,” he said, peering out the window behind the couch.

“Yeah.”

“Not gonna stop until the morning.”

“I saw that,” she said.

“You might be stuck here with me.” 

She met his gaze in the near-dark, their eyes the same color. The air felt heavy in her lungs, on her chest.

“You still got that hot tub out back?” she whispered.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
